The proliferation of digital information has created a new HDTV (High Definition Television) industry employing the concept of a "digital studio". In brief, a digital studio is an environment or system having numerous components where various sources of digital information can be selectively accessed and manipulated (in real time or in delay mode) by multiple clients. For example, a customer can schedule a movie around a "live" broadcast, such that the movie is forwarded to the customer's television by a provider at a particular time, where the movie is paused to forward the "live" broadcast and then resume from the point where the movie was interrupted. Furthermore, digital information is often converted into compressed bitstreams which create issues such as latency and data rate requirements. Thus, the command and control architecture necessary to integrate the various digital studio components presents a unique challenge.
Currently, there is a Digital Storage Media Command and Control (DSM-CC) architecture (ISO/IEC 13818-6, hereby incorporated by reference), which is a specification of a set of protocols for managing the functions and operations of ISO/IEC 11172 Motion Pictures experts Group (MPEG-1) and ISO/IEC 13818 (MPEG-2) bitstreams. More specifically, the DSM-CC protocol set is particularly designed to provide command and control to a system architecture for the delivery of MPEG video streams from a server to a client, e.g., a set-top box. However, since it is anticipated that the numerous components of the digital television broadcast studio will be under distributed control, the current DSM-CC protocol set lacks the flexibility and features that are contemplated for a digital studio.